Friday, May 15, 2009

A newsletter - the right strategy to fight mortgage fraud

Faced with a explosion of mortgage fraud, the FSA sets up a National Fraud Strategic Authority. Do we see a sudden increase in police activity leading to the arrest and prosecution of offenders.

Oh no, we get nothing like that. We get a newsletter. Excuse my cynicism, but there is now irrefutable evidence of mortgage fraud in parliament. Of course, don't expect anything from the FSA, or the police. They are too busy producing their NFSA newsletter.

Here is an except. Read on if you dare, because if you do, you will despair for the future of our country.

In July we (FSA) revealed a series of initiatives that we are putting in place to tackle the growing problem of mortgage fraud. It’s a programme that requires close cooperation with regulators, law enforcement, firms and the newly established National Fraud Strategic Authority (NFSA).

The NFSA aims to coordinate the public and private sectors effort to make the UK a hostile environment for fraudsters. This is of particular importance at a time when firms believe that financial crime is on the increase, as shown in the results of this year’s financial crime perception survey, which also attempts to measure how successful we are in tackling financial crime.

Come on! You know the UK way is to do nothing: set up an agency, a website, get together some leaflets (in various languages) and then issue a newsletter. Rinse, repeat. It's called 'light touch regulation'. Gordon loooves that.